Andersonville National Historic Site

Bronze panel on the rear of the New York Monument.

I made my first visit to Andersonville National Historic Site a couple weeks ago, only 40 some years after my first attempt to read MacKinlay Kantor's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. My wife and I were attending the 26^th annual meeting of the Association of Sultana Descendants and Friends. In all, 53 people attended the gathering, headquartered in Americus, Georgia. We spent one full day touring the prison site, the National Prisoner of War Museum, and the National Cemetery. 

Alan Huffman wrote an excellent
book chronicling, in part, the Civil
War saga of Anne's great grandfather.

Interpreting the site for us was historian Kevin Frye, who has devoted countless hours to helping people research the prisoners, and guards, assigned to Camp Sumter. A considerable number of passengers on the Sultana had been held at Andersonville. Anne's ancestor, who survived the disaster, was held at Cahaba prison in Alabama, though apparently some records do list him as spending time at Andersonville (we think erroneously). 

Like so many battlefields, the pastoral scene at Andersonville today, a rural expanse of green, with birds chirping in the pleasant spring weather, presents the visitor with little sense of the abject misery and horrors of the Civil War-era stockade.

One of Thomas O'Dea's drawings of the prison in 1864.
See a full set of his prison drawings here. 

Issuing rations, Andersonville Prison, Georgia, August 17, 1864.
Photo by A. J. Riddle (click to enlarge)

Below are a few images I took on April 27 (the anniversary of the Sultana explosion). To see a few dozen more photos, visit my Flickr set here. 

Kevin Frye telling the story of the prison 

Partial reconstruction of the stockade

The "Sinks" — downstream end of Stockade Branch

For reasons lost to history, the stone of Sgt. L. S. Tuttle
of Maine has a stone dove affixed to it, the only grave
in the National Cemetery with a special adornment. 

Dave the Slave, up close and personal

Back in November of 2009, I posted an interview with author Leonard Todd, discussing the subject of his book, Carolina Clay, the Life and Legend of Slave Potter Dave. The book is a fascinating account of Todd's discovery that one particularly skilled South Carolina potter was a slave owned by members of his family. He did not know that when he first read about an exhibition of Dave's work in a New York Times article in January of 2000. 

From the interview, which can be read here, Todd explained:

That moment of discovery was like finding a door flung wide to the past: Through it, I could glimpse a complex world of clay and kilns and pottery workers—that I had known nothing of. I was pleased to find that I was linked to Dave, one of the south's great artisans, yet dismayed that slavery was the mechanism that connected us. 

Flash forward to the year 2013. I had forgotten that certain examples of Dave's pottery were on display in select museums. At the time I read Todd's book, and interviewed him, I had no plans to travel to South Carolina, a state I had never visited until last month when the Civil War Forum held its 17th Battlefield Conference in Charleston. One of the stops on the first day of our gathering was a tour of the Civil War collection at the Charleston Museum, the oldest museum in America. 

It was tremendously exciting to turn a corner and see a display of local pottery, inscribed by the potters. I was hoping Dave's work would be featured, and sure enough, it was.  .  .  It's a great museum—set aside some time to visit, if you have the opportunity.

Charleston 2013 Reunion: Day Four

Fort Sumter, from Fort Moultrie

Some of the big guns at Fort Moultrie

Breech Inlet on Sullivan's Island, where the Hunley launched

Charleston 2013 Reunion: Day Three

Soldier graffiti, Secessionville Manor 

Pat Brennan leading the troops, Secessionville Manor

Pat Brennan, Battle of Secessionville

Pat Brennan, Rick Hatcher -- Charleston Battery,
discussing the ironclad assault on Fort Sumter. 

Charleston 2013 Reunion: Day Two

Seeing the Hunley at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center

Pat Brennan discussing his experience at the raising of the Hunley,
and prepping the crowd for tomorrow's Secessionville tour

Fort Sumter National Monument historian Rick Hatcher, spelling it all out.

Charleston 2013 Reunion: Day One

Major Steven Smith at the H.M.S. Seraph Memorial, Citadel Campus

Clay pot by "Dave the Slave," Charleston Museum. See this earlier blog post.

Grahame Long, Curator of History, at the oldest museum in the United States.

And so it begins -- The Civil War Forum in Charleston

Annual design, as always, by Stevan Meserve

[Captain Charles A. and Sergeant John M. Hawkins, Company E, "Tom Cobb Infantry," Thirty-eigth Regiment, Georgia Volunteer Infantry]

Opening today at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

Photography and the American Civil War

April 2–September 2, 2013

More than two hundred of the finest and most poignant photographs of the American Civil War have been brought together for this landmark exhibition. Through examples drawn from the Metropolitan's celebrated holdings of this material, complemented by important loans from public and private collections, the exhibition will examine the evolving role of the camera during the nation's bloodiest war. The "War between the States" was the great test of the young Republic's commitment to its founding precepts; it was also a watershed in photographic history. The camera recorded from beginning to end the heartbreaking narrative of the epic four-year war (1861–1865) in which 750,000 lives were lost. This traveling exhibition will explore, through photography, the full pathos of the brutal conflict that, after 150 years, still looms large in the American public's imagination.